What do you get when you combine shonky 70s Kung Fu movie sensibilities with overdubbed dialogue, an Extremely Irish King Arthur, rape, incest, and a director who turned down The Lord of the Rings to make it all happen?
Excalibur!
Apparently!
I was so ready to laugh this movie off. It is patently ridiculous in its visuals, storytelling, and firm belief that the best way to record an actor's performance is through pantomime before they shout their lines into a tin can three feet long i...
2018-11-23 21:47:15 +0000 UTC
View Post
This movie chosen by a "Fennelsher" patron.
I get frustrated by parodies that poke fun at aspects of an original work, only to commit the same sins. Movies that mock sexism and are still, for the most part, sexist. Games that make jokes about awful tutorials and still have an awful tutorial (*cough* Far Cry: Blood Dragon *cough*). Comics that criticize overuse of the fourth wall by overusing the fourth wall in an in-universe comic that overuses the fourth--
This hole goes de...
2018-11-19 07:53:50 +0000 UTC
View Post
Yes, Split can be seen as yet another movie using mental illness as a plot point--a villainous trait to be feared. However, I think there's something valuable to be taken from its version of a final confrontation.
In classic horror movie fashion, the Final Girl confronts our antagonist. There's just one problem: he's unstoppable.
As The Beast marches down the hallway, tanking shotgun blasts, Casey runs out of bullets. He begins to pry open the bars of the cage she locked herself inside, ...
2018-11-19 05:59:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
This is a really weird movie to watch in 2018--not just because of increasing demand for stories that don't objectify women or minorities in pursuit of some dude's 'cool' fantasy, but because of what we know of John Hughes' career before and after its creation. Weird Science came out the same year as The Breakfast Club. A year before Pretty in Pink, a year after Sixteen Candles, and two years after Mr. Mom. It's not intended to be more than a simple, fun, goofy fantasy movie--but the fact that a...
2018-11-17 02:27:56 +0000 UTC
View Post
I just finished Pitch Black. It's 2 AM, I have class in a few hours, and I really want to see it all over again.
Let's dig into that a bit.
I love the colors. The blatant overuse of distortion, saturation, and grading. Sometimes, for artistic effect. Sometimes, to communicate a character's perspective (like Riddick's 'shinejob'). Sometimes, just because it looks cool.
I love the environment and prop design. Yes, you could say it's functional or textured or any other manner...
2018-11-15 09:25:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
Yes, I could shout for hours about WHY THE HELL THEY LET NICOLAS CAGE HAVE A SOUTHERN ACCENT AND A DRAWL AND A MULLET OH GOODNESS GOSH--but I'll digress.
Con Air is refried action thriller sold alongside coffee hot enough to obscure the taste.
Con Air is the exact kind of absurdly obvious melodrama that would claim to be "Based on a True Story" in the trailers before throwing an alien craft into the background of an explosion in the Nevada desert because it would "be cool".
Con ...
2018-11-15 04:03:26 +0000 UTC
View Post
How do you make a movie after Die Hard, that's very much like Die Hard (complete with a similar antagonist, progression, characters, etc.), as the cinematographer of Die Hard, after people keep turning you away saying they don't want to copy Die Hard?
It turns out you just, uh...make it anyway.
Speed is one of the greatest testaments to the principle that ideas, in themselves, have little value. The team behind the idea are what bring it to life. As a result, no two implementati...
2018-11-13 05:01:36 +0000 UTC
View Post
The typical musical movie is an odd beast, come to think of it. If the stage is a step removed from film, than musicals are yet another, giant step away from that, requiring yet more specialized skills to transfer their strengths to another medium. The choreography needed, the mechanics of singing and acting at once within an environment where the actors used may be unaccustomed to the idea...If it works at all, the achievement is titanic.
Sometimes, however, the translation process does resul...
2018-11-13 03:47:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
There's a passage in the Bible - Isaiah 45:6-7 - that really threw me for a loop when I was younger:
"That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else.,
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."
A perfect, loving God...creating evil? The very thought feels wrong. If good and evil are created by the same presence, fundamentally supre...
2018-11-12 07:07:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
THE FINAL SCENE OF THIS MOVIE IS NICOLAS CAGE RAISING HIS EYEBROW HIGHER, AND YET HIGHER, UNTIL HIS FACE TRANSFORMS INTO A FLAMING SKULL
Phew. Had to get that out of my system.
Do you know what was the superhero movie of the day just a year after this released? Iron Man. The cinema revolution that, to this day, dominates the box office, came only a year after Ghost Rider earned over 200 million dollars. For some reason, that boggles my mind. It makes me consider the othe...
2018-11-09 04:03:59 +0000 UTC
View Post
Here's the thing about seeing the two Bill & Ted movies back to back - it is an awful idea, and you should do it immediately.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure isn't *good*, per se. It's fine. It's fun. Time-travelling teens build a travelling band of historical figures to help them ace their final history report. The movie is absurd and strange and has a good heart, which is exactly what it needs to work.
The first few minutes of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey d...
2018-11-09 01:09:41 +0000 UTC
View Post
COSMIC
COSMIC
COSMIC
Drench me in color. Make every shadow I cast a kaleidoscope. Create legend out of the broken potsherds of sin's deadly reign. Give Nicolas Cage a fricking Oscar.
Mandy is two hours long. It does not feel like two hours have passed.
Mandy has some of the best dialogue I've heard in a movie. There is almost none of it.
I am exhausted. Physically.
Mandy creates this entire twisted reality t...
2018-11-06 05:40:14 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dark Nights: Metal is a big ol' event about evil versions of Batman emerging from damned universes in the dark multiverse to (stay with me) drag the main DC Universe Earth in the light multiverse (STAY WITH ME YOU'RE ALMOST THROUGH THIS) into an eternal dark.
The Dark Knights Rising collection details the origin story of each of these Batmen. Most of them tended to be fairly rote. Batman finally took someone's life and went down a slippery slope, or claimed revenge, or stole someone's powers t...
2018-11-05 00:03:21 +0000 UTC
View Post
I have no idea how this got made.
What was the pitch meeting like? Who said, "That movie about the two totally bodacious teens going through history and kidnapping historical figures to do an utterly radical history report? Let's give that a ten million dollar budget." I'm glad it exists but I am completely lost as to how.
Napoleon gets a "Zyggie Piggie" pin for eating a frankly irresponsible amount of ice cream. Joan of Arc leads an aerobic class. Socrates and Billy the Kid hit...
2018-11-04 05:09:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
You Were Never Really Here is the first movie I've found to capture the reality of what suicidal ideation feels like on a chronic level.
Most of the time, movies treat suicidal thoughts and impulses as a dramatic element, or simply a deepening of depression. Neither of these uses quite capture the truth. Yes, suicide can be a dramatic, sudden, or all-encompassing thing, but sometimes it can just be mundane and draining as hell. Yes, suicide can be connected to depression, but ...
2018-11-01 03:05:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Wiz terrified me as a child.
That makes sense, because it is an unequivocally black science-fantasy body horror nightmarescape filled with the most disturbing, evocative imagery this side of childhood trauma.
A few highlights:
Dorothy finds the Tin Man trapped beneath his fourth wife. He rusts when he fires jets of tears from beneath his eyes. Haunting, painted caricatures of black minstrels harmonize in disembodied voices when Dorothy frees him, and he dances in the corpse of a f...
2018-10-30 05:29:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
According to the almighty memory of Twitter, I first watched Adaptation in June of 2016...Just before I announced the upcoming release of my first game, which would come out thirteen days later.
I remember admiring Charlie. The spurts of creative inspiration followed by deep malaise, relationships shriveling while he pursued true greatness, were relatable. I found his idiosyncrasy, and the struggles that arose from it, endearing. In my early-creative mind, Charlie's utter commitment to or...
2018-10-29 02:32:21 +0000 UTC
View Post
Let's be clear:
Vampire's Kiss is a bad movie.
The script and story are a mess. The workplace gender dynamics on display are both regressive, and unfortunately, still all too real. It's a semi-erotic psychological thriller drama comedy about a man with a stick up his ass and raging mental illness who believes that he's becoming a vampire. The soundtrack spins from cool techno to haunting beats to horror strings, seemingly on the turn of a dime.
The fact that this combination has an...
2018-10-28 03:18:20 +0000 UTC
View Post
- WHO GAVE NICOLAS CAGE A FREDDIE MERCURY MOUSTACHE
- WHO ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN
- imagine being the person who gave Nicolas Cage a Hack3r skull etch-a-sketch with little flame buttons that light up when he puts in his crime code. imagine being responsible for this
- oh wait it's just his diary nevermind folks
- Sean hisses out the word intelligence with every fiber of malice in his body
- I-I don't think I want to see Nicolas Cage smile any more
- "Take a break w...
2018-10-28 02:16:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
If you ask someone why the original Blade films were notable, one of the most common responses you'll get is that they were "cool". Specifically, Blade himself is cool.
Imagine my surprise when I found that wasn't the case.
At least, not universally.
Look at Blade in the above image. Among normal people.
He's a tall black man in a flat top wearing a long trenchcoat over blocky, bulky combat armor. In the daylight, Blade is frankly weird. He's dressed...
2018-10-27 04:41:58 +0000 UTC
View Post
HOLY CRAP VENOM
I walked in expecting very little. The trailer primed me to expect a so-so action thriller with a dull villain and some occasional fish out of water body horror comedy.
Venom smashed every one of those expectations.
Let's clear up a matter of genre first - Venom is a thriller only in terms of pacing. In tone and purpose, it is a buddy action comedy of the highest order. Disorientation is the order of the day, frenetic camerawork and surprisingly inc...
2018-10-27 04:00:58 +0000 UTC
View Post
Let's talk about hating God for a second.
*SPOILERS*
I think there are very few people of faith who have not been in Daredevil's position. Who did not despise God, or believe he despised them, and vice versa. Who thought about ditching religion entirely to forge a given path - soul be damned.
I've been there.
Daredevil was there.
And then...suddenly, he isn't.
After a few episodes of bold statements railing against God himself, the almighty plot kick...
2018-10-24 07:22:19 +0000 UTC
View Post
This was...a really bad movie to watch right after A Knight's Tale.
Where the latter is a clever, entertaining historical romp with layers of unexpected depth, Gladiator is what pops out of an oven when you type in the words "Hollywood Epic." Po-faced, overstated drama with dubious historical accuracy. A groaning, tottering hulk filled with incredibly talented people coming together to turn something kinda fine into a product that wins Academy Awards.
Regardless of the gravitas ...
2018-10-24 05:24:31 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Music Man takes us into a bizarro, absurdist world full of rubes for our con man protagonist to take advantage of, and eventually transforms Harold Hill into one of them.
It's...sweet. Kinda?
Simple, but sweet.
Even though The Music Man was made in the 60s, this is what I'll have in my mind when people talk about the "Golden Age" of Hollywood. Something that feels utterly of another time, yet outside of it. Pastel costumes bright enough to blind and people clearly in their 20s and 30...
2018-10-24 04:35:55 +0000 UTC
View Post
God it feels good to watch a movie you saw as a kid, and find it's better than you remembered.
A Knight's Tale does this thing - a thing it got heavily dinged for upon release - where it plays contemporary music, has significant modern references (i.e. the "origin" of the Nike symbol), and even embeds modern senses of fashion and fandom into a medieval environment.
Now, we're in a post-Ready Player One world. Drowning in the age of the meme. Of the replacement of jokes or statem...
2018-10-23 08:27:09 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Bodyguard is one of the best examples I've seen of a movie mirroring the perspective of its protagonist to artistic effect.
Kevin Costner's bodyguard places priority on his job to the detriment of his feelings and personal life. As a result, a movie that's ostensibly a romance is far more about protective measures, sightlines, and shootouts than simmering romantic tension. In fact, I'd argue this shift in focus lends the latter element authenticity it wouldn't have otherwise.
S...
2018-10-20 19:35:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
Four Weddings and a Funeral has one of the saddest happy endings I've ever seen. Charles and Carrie, standing in the rain, pledging their love amidst a dedication to never marry each other.
What's sad about this ending isn't that they didn't, well, marry - it's that we weren't given a reason to care about one of the two most important people in this fictional world.
Carrie isn't given a...Carriecter.
The traditional structure of a romantic comedy shows us two people,...
2018-10-20 18:26:46 +0000 UTC
View Post
SPOILER ALERT
If you haven't seen A Beautiful Mind yet, check it out. It's pretty decent.
CONTINUED ALERT OF SPOILERS
---
About 75% of the way into the movie, we learn that Nash has been suffering from delusions. His best friend in college was a lie, as was the friend's daughter, Nash's government handler, and the code-breaking jobs the latter assigned him.
Most TV shows or movies with a similar conceit (Fight Club, Mem...
2018-10-17 07:04:39 +0000 UTC
View Post
I'm sorry I didn't see this sooner.
Not in the sense that I'm apologizing to you. More that it has been added to a pile of regrets that only continues to grow with the arbitrary number associated with the length of my existence on this Earth.
LET'S TALK ABOUT A MOVIE
Escape From New York is a strange, strange movie to watch after decades of being twisted, subverted, or straight-up copied in almost every medium imaginable.
The vast majority of these copies fail, because they don'...
2018-10-17 06:17:34 +0000 UTC
View Post
I like dark stuff--dark comedies, deep thrillers, you name it. I can mainline tragedy regardless of my emotional state (I'm not sure whether that says more about my taste or just me as a person).
Field of Dreams has a classic, dark setup. A man in a field, his family just a few dozen yards away, hears a voice. It's telling him to do something...illogical. Absurd, even. Build a baseball field in the middle of nowhere, right on top of his crops. The voice whispers in his ear like a specter: "If ...
2018-10-15 04:56:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
